In case you haven't noticed, things are a little crazy right now. Wall Street is responding to many different unstable elements and the market is going up and down too quickly. With the economy in such a state of flux, and the possibility of an impending correction looming, the marketing and advertising environment will be scrutinized as it was in 1994, 2001 and 2008. How are you going to weather the storm?

Facebook bought Oculus. Its goal is to control the world you experience while wearing a pair of modified ski goggles. Mark Zuckerberg is stoked. Netflix is stoked. Marketers the world over are salivating. But how should you feel about this? Personally, I'm scared. I may even be terrified.

If we didn't already, now we know for sure that consumers don't love our brands and ads so much. Apparently, they're prepared to pay to ban intrusive and non-relevant advertising from their lives. People love the ability to block marketing efforts, whether it's ad blocking for $2.99 or an ad-free subscription with Hulu, Netflix or Amazon.

Psst. Over here. Yes, you. I have a secret. Promise you won't tell? OK, here goes: You know how you can get all this amazing free stuff on the Internet? You can read anything you want, learn anything you want, watch anything you want? Well, that's the secret: It isn't actually free.

If trend lines are to be drawn into the future from recent events, the death of the news brand is coming. The clock started not with the rise of the Internet, or the writing of ad-blocking code, but with the philosophy and construction of Web 2.0.

Let's be honest for a minute. My wife and I both love advertising. We're an anomaly in a lot of ways, but one is we tend to discuss what we like and didn't about the ads we see ("Chicken parm, you taste so good" is our current favorite). Last week, when I was coming up with my idea for this week's column, we coincidentally commented on the very same thing in passing conversation. The topic was what I decided to discuss this week. Simply put: The majority of ads on mobile SUCK!

If you want innovation, go to Switzerland. According to the Global Innovation Index, the Swiss are the most innovative people on the planet. Next is the U.K., then Sweden. The Dutch are pretty damn innovative, too, coming in at number four. Then you have the good old USA rounding up the top 5. So what makes a country innovative? And by extension, what lessons can we learn about encouraging innovation generally?

In a recent study, 200 senior marketing and media decision-makers revealed their dreams and aspirations for the year 2020 for our beloved profession. It is fair to say that many of their 2020 wishes sound more like the stuff of dreams. It's hard to see how, given current realities, any of the following will become a reality:

He wrote it back in June of 2014, but it only hit my newsfeed last week: a piece by GrowthHackers.com co-founder Morgan Brown, attractively (as you'd expect) titled "Ten Things I Learned Researching Ten of the World's Fastest Growing Startups." Lessons One and Two contain such worthwhile advice as, "Growth is nothing without the product" and "Growth is never 'done.'" At Lesson Three, however -- "Growth is not marketing. Marketing is not growth" -- I take exception.

Digital and data are rolling over the legacy establishments of the media industry. Events this week reminded us once again of the relentless, never-ending transformation that the media industry is suffering - or gaining, depending on your perspective - at the hands of digital and data technology and approaches.